Good News

It is a month after the typhoon hit The Philippines and I have just learned that all of my ex colleagues in Tacloban have survived.  I have only had direct communication with Emelyn because she had moved away from the city and the area of West Samar was less badly affected.  In the case of my other friends I have found out they are safe by trawling through Facebook to look at postings from their friends and relatives.  I won’t make bad remarks again about Facebook (well not for a while anyway) for it has been a very useful forum for information about the survivors. 

We had a fund raising evening at the club.  We ate Filipino food and danced the Tinikling, the dance which entails stepping in and out of bamboo canes.  There weren’t many broken ankles. It all made me realise how there is much about the country and people that I miss. When the communications are up and running, which isn’t likely to be until after Christmas, I will send the money raised directly to the people to help rebuild their homes.

Watching and Waiting

The Man that Knows Everything knocked on my roof this morning at 7am demanding coffee. He’s a happy bunny because he had just heard from his new love in The Philippines that she and her family are safe.  She’d queued for four hours to make a three minute telephone call.  She said there was no sign of any food being distributed within the city and was surprised that throughout the world money was being donated to help them.  Four days must seem an eternity to be without food or fresh water and to live amongst the death and destruction of this typhoon. It is easy to criticise the government and aid agencies for doing too little too slowly but the logistics of moving help to disaster zone must be incredibly difficult.

I am doing what he has spent the last few days doing. Watching video after video to see if there is a face I can recognise:  looking at the scenes of devastation to see if I can identify places of safety that friends could have gone to: the office I worked from is no longer standing:  the area of Sagakahan where my friend and god-daughter live is flattened and under water.

Going to school

 

As my son said we often see images of disasters of displaced and grieving people but when you know the place and many of the inhabitants those images are so much more emotive. 

Barugo Church

I keep wondering if the lovely children in the schools I visited have survived, what about the chatty man who sold me roast chicken and the miserable old cow at the supermarket check-out.  What about MacMac who strapped half coconut husks on his feet to polish my floor. I can’t get any information about what has happened in Barugo where the biscuit makers co-operative I worked with live or in Barangay Bukid where the chicken rearing project was started.  All we can do at the moment is to watch and wait and give money to the aid agencies.  When the communications are up and running then I can send money directly.  I think Western Union will get the money transfer system working as soon as possible, after all they aren’t going to miss a business opportunity like this, then I can send money directly to the people to help them try and rebuild their lives. It is all I can do.

 

The eye of the storm

Here on The Nene we battened down the hatches for a storm that never arrived.  It seems trivial that we even worried about it when you compare it to the truly devastating storm that has hit The Philippines.

Tacloban Harbour in calmer times

I’m finding the news from there particularly poignant because the centre of the storm was in Tacloban a city I lived in for two years.  I can look at the pictures of the devastation and recognise the places that have been damaged.  I know how vulnerable are the shanty towns that have grown up around the edge of the Tacloban Bay.  Many of the people that I worked with lived in bamboo dwellings roofed with grass which offer little protection from falling coconut and banana trees or telegraph poles.

 

Tacloban Shanty Town

I lived through one typhoon that’s epicentre passed through the city.  It was nowhere near as strong as this typhoon and I lived in a concrete house above the areas liable to flooding yet it was still frightening.  I can only imagine how terrifying it was to have the wind howling around a house amongst trees, with roofs that are about to take off and watching torrential rain fall and see the water rising or to live on a hillside where the drenching could trigger landslips.

 The people of The Philippines are resilient.  They have to because disasters strike regularly. They will pick themselves up, clear up the mess and get on with their lives.  They will do it with humour and humanity. One thing my two years in Tacloban did teach me was to love and respect the Filipinos, especially the very poor. At the moment I can’t reach any of the people I know out there but my thoughts are with them and I hope they have come through the storm unscathed.



Bohol hit by the typhoon and a recent earthquake

Ear Worms

My current ear-worm is Perfect Day, not surprising as it’s being played a lot on the radio following the death of Lou Read, and it’s embedded itself in my head.

As I was walking yesterday afternoon with Perfect Day on a continuous loop I thought that it actually was a perfect day.  The wind had dropped and the sun was out casting a strong yellow light across the changing colours of the autumn leaves.  Overhead the Kites were calling. The river was glistening away into the distance.  Then at 5.00pm it started to get dark.  A day that ends that early is far from being perfect.  I hate the short days of winter.




5pm and it's almost dark!

We might not have got the high winds of the storm but somewhere around here it’s been raining heavily.  The river which only a few days ago was still and clear is now a fast flowing khaki.  I left on Monday morning and it had risen a few inches I came back late and in the dark on Monday night and banged my knee on the side of the boat as I tried to step in.  The river had risen a couple of feet.  The EA have slapped strong stream notices on, so there won’t be any boats passing although yesterday the rowers were out. 

There’s not a lot of rain forecast for the rest of the week so hopefully the river will go down as we’re all hoping that we don’t get the flooding we had last year.

 

An imperfect storm

Laying in bed watching a grey dawn break and reading boaters blogs.  Sensible people have been preparing for the predicted storm.  Solar panels have been strapped down, items have been removed from roofs, boats have been moored away from trees, ropes have been checked, hatches have been battened.

I did look at the wind direction and decided the tree next to my boat would land on my car and not the boat so maybe it would be a good idea to move my car. I didn’t get around to moving the car.  Until I read some blogs this morning I didn’t even think of removing planks and poles from the roof. I didn’t think to check the ropes. I haven’t got a hatch to batten.

This morning the wind doesn’t seem very powerful, the ropes are giving occasional creaks and groans.  The rain is sporadically hammering on the roof but here on The Nene the weather doesn’t seem much different from the last few days, if anything the wind seems quieter.

I’ve just looked out and the chimney, planks and poles and brooms are still on the roof. My car is tree free.   So it was just as well that I didn’t take time out from reading a crappy novel to prepare for a storm that seems to have passed us by.  I was right in having a good nights sleep and not laying awake worrying about the consequences of extreme weather.  I just wish I’d remembered to bring my full coal scuttle and box of kindling in out of the rain.

 

Being stupid

Moving downriver last week:

I prepared to leave. I pushed the bow out and let the flow and the wind take it round while I stood at the tiller relaxing and  admiring the scenery. When it was facing downstream I put it into gear ready to move off.

I didn’t move. Damn.

I put it back into neutral, into gear again this time with more revs: still no movement.  The bow had now come right round and I was almost resting on the boat behind. I roared the engine and still there was no movement.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.  Just what I needed more expense! Bloody boats are always costing money!

Then I looked down and noticed I hadn’t untied my stern rope from the mooring.

In Memoriam

Now the grief has subsided and time has started to heal the pain I have permission to tell the sad story of the demise of Badger, a quiet and dignified dog.

 On getting off the boat on a Sunday morning after a heavy night in the pub…………..

‘AM, why are you carrying a spade?’

‘The dog died last night’

'Oh’

‘I’m waiting for J to bury her.  I don't want to go back on the boat with my dead dog on it’

‘But you spent all night lying next to a dead dog’ says J

 ‘Yes, but I didn’t know she was dead then’

 ‘Wasn’t the fact that she’d stopped wheezing and gone stiff and cold a bit of a give-away’

 ‘Look can’t you just take this spade and bury the dog’

 ‘Shall I put it over by those trees, that’s a nice place for her to be buried’

‘No, it’s on a flood plain if the river floods again she might get washed away and I don’t want to look out of my window in six months time and see the dog sailing passed’

J does a very good impression of a dead dog zooming downstream: stiff legs: head at an awkward angle: inane grin on its face.

 ‘OK, AM we’ll set off and find a suitable place to bury her on the way back.’  So they take the spade back on board, start up the boat and go.

The rest of us stand around drinking coffee and swapping dead animal stories:  the dog which was wrapped tightly in a black bin bag and when the garden was dug over five years later it was preserved in its original state seriously disturbing the children who thought it had been re-incarnated:  the goat that wasn’t buried deep enough and the first heavy rain rearranged its burial site making four legs stick heavenwards like tent poles. The man Who Knows Everything tells of a neighbour who had their pet cat stuffed, he can do a good impression of a dead cat, it’s looking upwards with its tongue lolling out, gazing lovingly at it’s owner. R tells of sweating away burying a dead dog deeply, sticking  a cross over it and then going in and being told he had to move it because it was in direct view of the kitchen window and it would be upsetting to look out on it every day. He went out, dug it up and re-buried it.  ‘Why didn’t you just rough the new ground up a bit and move the cross?’  asks B

‘Oh, I never thought of that.’

‘We shouldn’t be making jokes’ says B ‘AM was really upset, you know she’s had that dog for years and to make matters worse it died on her birthday' 

We mumble and nod in sympathy and drink more coffee.

 'Maybe we should send her a ‘With Sympathy’ card.’

 'She’d think we were taking the piss’

‘How about we make up a poem about the dog and add that to the card, sort of personalise it. What was the dogs name?’

 ‘Badger’

 ‘Ok what rhymes with Badger?’

 ‘Tadger’ says The Man Who Knows Everything

 ‘I think the dog was female, she wouldn’t have a tadger’

 ‘Right, there’s the start of the rhyme

Poor little Badger

Never had a tadger………………………….’

We heard later that further downriver the dog burying saga continued.  They stopped at Lilford Lock, one of the prettiest and most peaceful locks on The Nene and found the ideal spot for Badger to be laid to rest but the spade was too weak to cope with the tree roots.  They moved on down to Oundle and found a quiet place on the riverbank but the poxy spade wouldn’t go through the hard ground so they put her in the back of the car to take her home.  Then they arranged a family meal so didn’t have time to bury the dog so she stayed in the garden until the birthday celebrations were over. 

Poor old Badger, more trouble in death than she ever had been in life.